I admit to downloading it, but never burned it to disk. Running any OS from the CD/DVD is going to be slow, and try as they might, for Nvidia users, nouveau is never going to quite meet the performance available in a bare-metal install with the proprietary drivers installed. Can't address the AMD/ATi end of it. I managed to dodge that particular bullet. Intel users won't see any performance decay (strictly in video) from bare metal to LiveCD/DVD.

The benefit to perhaps installing from the Design Spin LiveCD, is the pre-loaded compliment of design tools. But when I bare-metal fedora, I end up installing most of those anyway via Yumex.

From a personal anecdotal point of view, F16/F17 loaded onto an SSD and with E17 installed and used instead of Gnome-shell on an Intel video chipset is lightning fast and rock solid.

I was intruiged by it I must admit, I am going to attempt an install to HDD and see how it goes! Luckily for me I use AMD and so far the drivers only give me slight discolouration in the OS. Tbh I did debate whether or not to just install the tools using Yumex but half of what comes preinstalled isnt what I use anyway! I am quite a fan of E17 but I did find it a little distracting (constantly getting more and more little tuxes to drop down the screen) but I think from a design perspective a simple lxde or xfce would be best as it will free up some processors for what need them for.

I will give it a go at home tonight and I may have to review it on my blog, I have yet to do a fedora review so why not choose one I like!

If I am honest with all of the spins each one has something of interest so I will morte than likely eventually install packages from each one that is needed (luckily I ave ample hard drive space and processor space).

I have looked at the design suite spin, but I had much rather do a clean install of Fedora from the DVD and not use LiveCD's for installs. The DVD gives more options for the install (like system filesystem choices, for one), and I can always go back and install any other packages included in the spins later from the online repos.

About the only time I might be interested in using a LiveCD would be if I created one myself for a particular set up that I wanted to clone to several machines.

An educated response thank you. I need to do a reinstall because I stupidly installed the 32 bit system instead, but luckily for me I only ever use external storage so its no major drama. Which DVD is it you are using? I am using the one that came with the Linux Format magazine, and for some reason it didnt give me an option for 64 bit?